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by WILL FOLKS
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This week, South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson stormed to an unprecedented victory in the Republican runoff election for governor – decisively defeating lieutenant governor Pamela Evette, the hand-picked successor of governor Henry McMaster and the (first) choice of president Donald Trump to succeed him.
Wilson’s win was monolithic – a clear mandate from the Palmetto State’s Republican electorate and a sharp repudiation of the status quo embodied by McMaster and his allies.
If recent history is any indication, the landslide is also likely to carry Wilson to the governor’s mansion – as no Democrat has won a statewide race in South Carolina in twenty years.
“I was surprised at the margin – and I’m incredibly humbled by it,” Wilson said during an extended sit-down interview with FITSNews earlier this week.
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According to Wilson, his campaign prevailed because he stayed focused on the voters he was trying to court – not all of the mud being thrown at him by his political rivals.
“My intent was not to make my campaign about my opponent – and I really didn’t want to make it about me, or who endorsed me,” he said. “I really tried to make it about the people, the voters. That was always my focus. While people were saying bad things about me, I was saying ‘this is what I want to do for you.’ I think people wanted that. I think they were tired of the negativity.”
Asked about the moment Trump initially endorsed his opponent (the president would later “co-endorse” once it became clear Wilson was going to win), the state’s top prosecutor described it as “resiliency training.” He said a mutual friend of ours sent him a movie clip that inspired him to roll with the punch… literally.
“It’s that scene from Rocky Balboa when he’s talking to his grown son on the street corner and he says, ‘life is not about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep getting up and going forward,” Wilson said. “I played that clip over a couple of times.”
“There were a couple of days there that we were nervous,” Wilson said. “But when I saw that clip come in, it was like ‘okay, get back up, Alan. get up. You can’t control those things, focus on the things you can control – and don’t stop fighting.'”
He didn’t…
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Wilson and I talked about the barrage of negative attacks he absorbed – and the fact that both Republican and Democrat primary voters ultimately rejected wealthy self-funding candidates like Rom Reddy and Billy Webster, choosing instead to pick more blue-collar options like him and state representative Jermaine Johnson, the Democrat nominee.
We also discussed the outlier in the primary election – Horry County. A GOP enclave, Horry was one of the only counties carried by Evette. Many attributed her victory there to negative publicity surrounding a high-profile wrongful death case involving Wilson’s office.
FITSNews has extensively covered the Scott Spivey case – one of three true crime sagas that was heavily politicized during the 2026 gubernatorial primary. Wilson has referred the case to another solicitor, but that hasn’t stopped the barbs from coming his way.
“People exploited that family, they exploited – they misled people on the facts of the case,” he said bluntly when asked about the interplay between the investigation and the election.
In our extended conversation, Wilson and I talked about his upcoming general election against Johnson, the issues he would seek to advance if elected governor as well as the latest developments in Alex Murdaugh‘s retrial, which he is continuing to oversee as attorney general.
To watch the full interview, click here…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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